FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT WELFARE STATE - PAGE 4

WASHINGTON -- Florida ranked last or nearly last among the 50 states in almost every category of receiving and spending money, according to a Census Bureau report released Wednesday on state government finances in 1985. Florida`s series of sub-40 finishes in the Census rankings underscored its low spending on social programs, its lack of an income tax, vast growth, under-developed infrastructure and conservative ways, according to state experts in Washington and Tallahassee. "To some extent that`s a function of state policy, because Florida is not a liberal, welfare state," explained Stephen Sauls, former chief state lobbyist and now top aide to Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.

Like branches growing from the same family tree, brothers Jeb and George W. Bush are developing a new brand of conservative thinking that already dominates the political scene in Florida and is emerging as the Republican ideology for the frontrunner's presidential campaign. The comparisons are inevitable, the similarities striking. Both Bush brothers are reaching outside the usual GOP comfort zones to appeal to blacks, Hispanics, the urban poor and other traditional Democratic constituencies.

In 1786 the Annapolis Convention, requested by Virginia and attended by only four other states, called for a second gathering to revise the Articles of Confederation in order to strengthen the federal government. Some revision: The second meeting became the Constitutional Convention. It scrapped the Articles, partly because the Founders were alarmed by states legislating relief of debtors at the expense of creditors, often in ways not easily distinguished from theft. Something not easily distinguished from theft recently occurred in Annapolis.

Fifty years ago, Wisconsin Sen. Eugene McCarthy wielded two words that became tantamount to the vilest invective in the English language: red and the slightly less offensive, but potentially equally dangerous, pinko. McCarthyism, as it became known, was the practice of accusing groups or individuals of political disloyalty and subversion, usually without sufficient evidence. It has become a synonym for reckless accusation. Now there is a new seven-letter word used by Republicans to describe most Democrats or fellow-travelers: liberal.

An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives. This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values, and everyone else votes to well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

Random thoughts on the passing scene: Ad for a ski resort: "If swimming is so healthful, why are whales so fat?" Talk about cloning human beings recalls Winston Churchill's comment about the secrets of the atom, "hitherto mercifully withheld from man." Why create human beings by cloning, which has produced abnormalities in animals, instead of creating people in the old-fashioned way that has worked for thousands of years? Directive from a female honcho in a big corporation: "Advancing women is the new business imperative.

Paris is paralyzed by a strike of workers determined to keep the lavish benefits of a welfare state. We cannot mock; Washington D.C. commuters were blocked on their way to work this week by "Sweeney's garbagemen," militant AFL-CIO unionists resisting overdue cuts of waste in waste management. Will France stem the tide of red ink that has reached 5 percent of its domestic product? If the United States ran such a rate of deficit, we would be borrowing over a half-trillion dollars a year.

A specter is haunting free enterprise - the specter of the New Socialism. The old Socialism failed. The Marxist notion that state ownership could triumph over capitalism led to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In its other form - the democratic welfare state - the old Socialism is being abandoned. Privatization is in; from Sweden and Britain to Israel and throughout Asia, tight state control of business is unraveling. In the U.S., even the majority of Democrats read the public mood against tax-and-spend and turned away from the stultifying excesses of income redistribution.

With Europe in the midst of a debate over its economic future, Chancellor Helmut Kohl on Friday announced a plan for cuts in Germany's well-padded welfare state that threaten social benefits his compatriots have come to regard as virtually sacrosanct. The proposed measures, intended to reduce Germany's budget deficit by about $33 billion, reflected a broader sense in Europe that leaner times lie ahead for nations working for a European currency. The German measures come two days after France announced sweeping changes in its national health care system.

Signalling a historical shift in how Congress thinks America should help its poor, the Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill to overhaul the nation's welfare system. After weeks of haggling, the Senate voted 87-12 for a measure that would dismantle federal anti-poverty programs and shift the welfare burden to the states. "We are not only writing truly historic landmark legislation, legislation that ends, ends, a 60-year entitlement program," said Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kansas.